NORTH BOWEN CANYON – MAY 2015
Julie B messaged that she was doing a run through North Bowen with a friend from the US and would I like to join her. I’d not done a wet canyon after April 1 before so figured it was worth giving it a go, North Bowen’s not that wet (as I remembered), turns out my memory was a little off!
Aine G, Codi and I joined Julie. North Bowen’s all over the net, so I wont put any notes in here, other than to say that it wasn’t all that bad (I did 2 abseils but the others did 3, so captions are all over the shop and I get the pitches mixed up anyway). Yes, there’s more water there than I had remembered (and I’d only done it four months previously, my memory must be really, really bad), you couldn’t avoid getting wet, but, I had on two thermals under my wetsuit, wetsuit gloves and a wind breaker.
I could have done with a beanie, but then think that if that had gotten wet, it would have just made me colder.
We were all experienced and so got through the canyon fairly efficiently, everyone else did the first abseil (that you can do into a pool), but I did the down-climb on the roots, I wasn’t getting wetter any sooner than I had to!
The photos, haven’t been touched up, but the colour makes it look really cold, that was accidental, but I sort of like it.
We finished fairly quickly and left our wetsuits on and made for the exit track, climbing out in the wetsuits, we didn’t even break into a sweat. When we had climbed up most of the way (we weren’t far from where the track flattens out), we stopped, took off our wetsuits and had lunch. Then it was an hour’s walk back to the cars. Thanks so much for inviting me Jules, I like to do a little canyoning through winter, will wear more clothes next time, or better still, let’s do something dry!